


you wait for it to destroy the earth

by laceslady



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laceslady/pseuds/laceslady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia is a ghost and Sollux is waiting for the world to end. Feferi helps.</p><p>"it’s the feeling of being half awake while you wait for it to rain and thunder and destroy the earth and the feeling of being in love with someone & waiting for it to destroy ur body and mind in the same way."</p>
            </blockquote>





	you wait for it to destroy the earth

**Author's Note:**

> written to [this](http://420lovesongs.tumblr.com/post/48417256446/song-105-is-one-i-recorded-today-during-a-storm) song

Your friends are trolling you, wanting to know where you are, what you’re doing, why you haven’t answered them in over a week. You expect AA at your door at any moment, and though you haven’t gotten out of your ‘cupe in two days you don’t care about her finding you in such a state.

You’re sad, unbearably so.

You just want to sleep, to sleep forever and never ever wake up again, because you can hear your friends screaming as they die, one by one, a whole cacophony of the dying breaths of your entire race. They’re all going to die soon, and no one wants to listen when you tell them. You can’t hold that against them though; if you didn’t hear them, if you were the one being told you and all your friends were going to die soon, you wouldn’t listen either. Nobody wants to think about dying. The difference between you and them is that you have to think about it, every moment of your life.

AA comes in as you’re falling back asleep. She tries to rouse you, but you’re too far gone and she’s only a ghost, after all. She can’t touch you. She’s only here because it’s her habit, because she’s used to this, because she’s the only one who cares enough.

You wake up crying, fat yellow tears running down your cheeks. AA sits there, watching you without any expression at all on her face. She’s dead. She’s dead and you loved her, you loved her, you loved her more than anyone you’ve ever known. And she’s dead.

“Please get up,” she says, though the plea is only a desaturated version of the way she was when she was alive.

She’s dead and you killed her.

 

She hangs around for a few days after you finally get up. You talk to KK and tell him that you’re better. You lie to KK, and he believes it.

You watch AA float through your hive, and though she is trying to help you her presence only makes things worse. You tell her as much, and after a moment of staring at you, she nods and floats off without a word. You cry again, after that, and wish she had tried to stay. You need her, you need a living AA, because she was your heart and your diamond and everything that made you okay when life was not.

You act as close to normal as you can, after she’s gone, but you don’t respond to your Trollian messages as much as you normally do, and when you do they all know you’re not right. You want to talk to them but they can’t understand, will never understand, and so you don’t. You know AA will be back in your hive before long. Or maybe she won’t be. Maybe she took your words to heart and won’t ever come back unless you ask her to.

You sleep forever again.

  


Stronger arms than yours drag you out of your ‘cupe, carrying you like a wriggler to your ablution trap. You’re already shirtless, but your pants get tugged off and then there’s water spraying down on you. It makes you feel better, and wakes you up enough for your to open your eyes just a tiny bit and wonder who is caring for you because they can touch you and AA is dead and can never touch you again.

FF smiles down at you, her hair and clothes slowly becoming soaked. Feferi.

“FF?” you ask, and your voice is hoarse and whisper quiet.

“I know you’re not doing so well, so I’m here to help!”

She keeps smiling as you pass out.

 

When you’re awake again you’re dressed and in your nutrition block sitting at the table, with FF papping your face. You open your eyes and she smiles down at you, because FF is always smiling.

“Good night, sleepyhead!” she says, like you’re some kind of wiggler. “Hold on, I made some food for you. I think it might be okay but I’m not shore since we don’t have this kind of stuff underwater.” She darts away for a moment, and you’re still too out of it to really understand what’s going on, but she’s back a moment later, handing you a nutrition plateau.

You blink at her and now that you can smell the grubsauce on whatever she made you’re suddenly hungry, but... “Why are you here?” you ask, your voice still scratchy.

She frowns and dashes off again, handing you a glass of water. You accept it and drink, and she answers. “I told, you, remember? Maybe you don’t. You were acting so weird on Trollian, and I started getting worried! Then Aradia told me you asked her to leave you alone, and that she wasn’t helping you. So I decided to be the one to take care of you this time.”

She cuts up some of the meat and hands you a fork with a bite sized piece on it. You eat it slowly, and she asks, “Why did you tell her that?” If anything her tone is curious, not judgemental in the slightest, but-

“She’s dead,” you say. You don’t expect her to be understanding and you don’t feel like elaborating. She cuts you another piece of meat, and you eat it in silence.

You go on like that for a few more bites until you feel okay enough to cut it up by yourself. Then she just stands quietly beside you. When you’re almost finished she says, “I know that the world is going to end.” You don’t answer, but she keeps going. “Gl'bgolyb tells me. She tells me lots of things, and that’s one of them. I know it isn’t the same, but I hear her whispering almost all the time. So I know, maybe, a little bit how you feel. I know Aradia knows better than I do, and I know... you love her, very much. But I don’t want you to die, okay? So I’m helping you!”

You wouldn’t admit it to her, but hearing that she has a harbinger of doom perpetually whispering in her ear does make you a little more receptive of her offers to help. You don’t want to talk about that though and you don’t want to seem receptive, so you change the subject and say, “Aren’t you a little far from home?”

At that she cracks another huge smile. “Yes but I don’t care! This is really exciting actually, did you know that I’ve never been this far from the ocean before?” She’s practically bouncing with enthusiasm, and it’s a little jarring to you. You’re not really used to trolls smiling so much, or being this excited about anything. “Everything on the surface is so funny! Especially your hive, it’s so close to so many other trolls! If you were higher on the hemospectrum you’d all krill each other.”

“Fuck the hemospectrum I want to kill them all anyway,” you say. It isn’t really meant as a joke. You still feel like shit and despite the fact that she’s making you into a functioning troll again you don’t understand why FF is here. You hope your unending displays of negativity and hopelessness will be enough to make her leave you alone.

She giggles though, and says, “Well aren’t you crabby! Just the way Solluxes should be! Now that you’re better you should talk to Aradia and tell her you’re okay. I think she’s worried, even if she doesn’t show it!”

“She doesn’t feel anything, she’s dead.”

She lets out a huff of anger, or maybe frustration. “That isn’t glubbing true and you know it. You care about her, so don’t act like she’s gone forever because I know she isn’t!”

Her aggravation with you over AA is... nice. Like she actually does care. But you don’t want to let her, you want to push her away. It’s the same reason you push everyone away: to see if they’ll come back. 

“Yeah, she’s not gone forever, her ghost just hangs around being depressing and making me-” Fuck you’re so stupid you cannot be talking about this, you can’t be talking about AA because when you do you can’t control what you tell people it all just comes out of you in a rush and you say things you don’t want anyone to know about you. When you talk online you can control yourself, but here in person it’s hard make yourself stop.

FF looks at you from behind her goggles, wide eyes magnified by their lenses. She isn’t excited or angry anymore, but FUCK she looks understanding and no, you know she doesn’t understand at all, it’s just a ruse, it’s just a trick to make you- “It’s okay to want the old Aradia back,” she says, “You don’t have to feel bad about that.”

The switch inside your head gets flipped and you lose it completely. 

“Are you fucking insane?! Of course I have to feel bad about it! AA can still think, she’s still sentient, she knows that I don’t love her anymore!” you shout, lisping like crazy, and oh damn it fucking shit what the hell was that, oh for fuck’s sake are you crying right now? Yes, you are, you are crying so hard you can’t breathe. 

FF has her arms around you and you’re crying into her shirt, you’re giving up on self control because you’ve never said that before, even to yourself inside your head you’ve dodged around the idea without ever directly addressing it and oh it hurts. She was your matesprit and you killed her and you stopped loving her because of it and you can never bring her back no matter how hard you try.

Your glasses come off and you’re whispering ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again between sobs, “I’m sorry, I-I’m s-sorry, I’m s-s-so sorry, p-please AA, I-I’m so sor-r-ry,” and you hate yourself for being weak, for being a lowblood, for being a mutant, for everything you are that took AA away from you.

FF holds you and you end up on the floor together without knowing how you got there because you’re holding onto her for dear life and if you let go you’ll lose it completely. Or maybe you’re past that point because the pain is so intense you’re howling with it. You want to break things, to hurt things, but you are so utterly drained by your pain and misery that all you’re capable of is bawling and wailing. You’re a mess of snot and tears, your face flushed bright yellow, the world a distant dream in the reality of this heartrending ache.

You have no idea how much time has passed when Feferi gently grabs your wrists and holds them between you. “Sollux,” she says, squeezing slightly. “Sollux it’s time to stop.” You open your eyes and your vision is so messed up, a lack of glasses compounded by the tears still flooding your eyes. You know you stopped shouting a while ago, but you don’t know how long a while is. You aren’t even really crying anymore. Tears wash silently down your face, unaccompanied by shaky inhalations, and the raw pain of before has subsided.

By now you’ve cried so much you’re just feeling numb.

FF runs her thumb over the inside of your wrist and you tug it out of her hand, wiping at your face to no effect.

“Thank you,” you say, your voice hoarse again.

She gets onto her knees and reaches up, grabbing your glass of water off the table. She hands it to you without saying anything, and you take a few sips that help calm you down some more.

You put the glass down on the floor and look at her, the slow realization of what you’ve done making you feel stupid and sad and... there’s a tiny small speck of good in there somewhere. “You didn’t have to do that,” you say.

“I know. But I don’t think anybody should have to be sad and alone. I want all my friends to be happy. And you’re one of them,” she says. Her shirt has a dark patch in the center from your crying, but other than that there’s no evidence of your breakdown.

She takes your hand in hers again, and you let her hold it this time. All you can think is that she stayed. You lost it and she didn’t leave or yell at you or make you feel stupid for crying, she just stayed and let you cry and held you. You’re emotionally spent, but you think if you were capable of it you would be feeling a lot of gratitude, and maybe some other things. But you’re tired again, and you can save your feelings for later.

You sigh and lie down, right on the floor under your table, still holding FF’s hand. She’s looking at you, a question, and you manage a small, close lipped smile as an answer. It must be enough because she lies down beside you, resting her head on your chest. Your hands unclasp only for a moment to adjust for the change in positions, and then her cool palm is pressed against yours once more.

You close your eyes and let yourself drift off to the sound of her breathing, feeling better than you have in a long, long time.


End file.
